METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER STUDIOS v. GROKSTER

[Rod Dixon]

Precisely! That's one very good reason why the court's distinction is
troubling; the court opines that access to source code means the
distributor/licensee CAN eliminate infringing uses of the p2p software.
This view is not only wrong, but it has adverse implications for open
source, but not proprietary, closed, locked up, software
distributors/licensees.
Rod


On Thu, 1 May 2003, Brian Behlendorf wrote:

> On Thu, 1 May 2003, Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M. wrote:
> > Second, the Court implied that an additional reason why proprietary software
> > distributors could not be held contributorily liable is due to its presumed
> > inability to modify the software in a manner similar to what was required in
> > Napster to decrease or eliminate infringing uses of the p2p software. This
> > conclusion is at odds with the open source software developement model,
> > where licensees may become distributors of software who do have access to
> > source code and, therefore, could not claim a lack of access to source code.
>
> Actually, isn't it the other way around?  If I give you, either an
> end-user *or* a redistributor, a P2P app with source, there's no way I can
> "decrease or eliminate infringing uses of the p2p software", because any
> DRM system I put in the app can be defanged.
>
> 	Brian
>
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